ICE, paper and blood

Some years ago someone came up with the idea of ICE numbers in your mobile phonebook. These would be numbers to be called In Case of Emergency which worked well until it was necessary to type in a PIN in order to access the phonebook. So now it became a bit more challenging – if I was found unconscious by a cryptologist they could crack my PIN code find my phonebook and call my ICE contact. Otherwise I would be stuffed.

However after my “What if . . . ?” post a friend told me that she has an app called “Health” on her phone. Once you set it up it has an “Emergency” button on the login page of the phone which can be accessed without using your PIN. If you are involved in some incident someone can press that button to see your name, contact details of family and pertinent medical history. Seems like a great idea so I searched for a five year old to tell be how to set it up but discovered that it is not available for a phone as old as mine. Oh well I will stick with a piece of paper in my wallet with key information on plus a Medic-Alert wrist-band with directions to my wallet in it.

Talking of paper I rarely get much news from a paper these days, preferring to read it on-line, but I do read some columnists. One where we seem to be on the same wavelength is the weekly column written by Tom Utley where I am nearly always in agreement with what he says. Last week his column had a particular resonance because after a lifetime of avoiding doctors and prescription drugs he was off for tests for a dicky ticker. In fact he had been even more successful than me at avoiding doctors and associated prescriptions. I have had far more tests and medical appointments in the last year than in the whole of the rest of my life, but back to the good Mr Utley. He wrote that his usual approach to any illness was to whinge to his wife and wait until it went away. This time that didn’t work and his wife booked him an appointment with his GP.

So this set him off on a train of thought about waiting times (his doctor’s name was Dr Waitt!), doctors spending more time explaining the options before major operations (a good thing but how would they find the time and was it ploy to get patients to opt for a cheaper alternative) and his own mortality. He didn’t mention that time honoured phrase “getting your affairs in order” but then perhaps he is organised enough to already have them in order. Nor did he go on to say whether he found the phrase “Not usually fatal” scary or reassuring. In these circumstances it is preferable to be a glass half full person rather than a glass half empty one. We were talking to someone running a shop earlier today who revealed that he had had chemotherapy in the 1980’s and he certainly seemed to be the glass half full type.

Today I had a ‘blood draw’ in preparation for seeing my Haematology Consultant on Monday. What’s a blood draw? Well we usually talk about going for a blood test whereas in America they talk about a blood draw which I think is more accurate. All we do is have a needle stuck in us and blood drawn out through it which then goes off to the lab (without us) to be tested. It will be interesting to see how my blood did in its test. Did it get an A* or a “Could do better”?